Pole Positioner

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski likens himself to the political equivalent of a musical conductor: he is a vice-president in the European Parliament and leader of the 19-strong delegation of Polish MEPs in the European People’s Party (EPP-ED).

But, judging by the views of some his countrymen and party colleagues, the notes he strikes are sometimes discordant and the ensemble does not always stay together.

Take, for example, this comment from a German colleague in Parliament’s EPP-ED group: “He tends to go head-first into things and can be a very arrogant man.”

Or the assessment of a Polish official at the European Commission: “He’s very competent but has got an attitude problem – and it shows.”

It is said by some that Saryusz-Wolski has an ego as big as his brains. His answer to the charge of a superiority complex is tantamount to pleading guilty.

“When I am certain my arguments are strongly founded, I am determined to defend them,” he says. “If that is arrogant, so be it.” Indeed, when asked to pinpoint a personal weakness, the worst he can suggest is a 20-cigarettes-a-day smoking habit.

Perhaps he has more to be arrogant about than some. Having played a pivotal role in steering Poland’s entry into the EU, he is now fast making a name for himself in Brussels, so much so that he is being lined up for a top job in domestic politics.

The faltering minority government of Polish prime minister Marek Belka seems likely to be ousted in a general election, expected in the autumn. A source close to Belka’s possible successor, Jan Rokita, leader of the centre-right Civic Platform party, says Saryusz-Wolski is being “seriously considered” for the foreign minister’s post. And Saryusz-Wolski himself refuses to exclude the possibility, saying: “No decision has yet been taken.” Not even false modesty will escape his lips.

Jacek was born in Lodz, Poland’s second biggest city and the country’s textile capital. It was a comfortable middle-class upbringing. His father, Emil, a chemical engineer, was stationed with Polish troops in Britain during the Second World War, while his mother, Eryka, worked as a landscape gardener. Fluent in English and French, he says he learnt the former from his father and the latter from his mother, who studied at the Sorbonne in 1938. He has a younger brother, a professor in engineering at Lodz Technical University.

From 1966-71, Saryusz-Wolski studied international economics at Lodz University and liked the place so much that he ended up teaching there full-time for the next 19 years. Even today, he still teaches at Lodz most Fridays.

In retrospect, he says that it was during a trip to the UK, back in the summer of 1968, that his interest in his homeland becoming a member of the EU was first awakened.

Fascinated by the debate at the time about British entry to the EU, he mused: “Why do the British have the choice to join and we Poles do not? It is a question that has directed my career ever since.”

Having started at Lodz as an assistant, he quickly rose to become associate professor. Repeatedly denied a passport in the 1970s and 1980s, it was not until 1989 that he was able to take up an invitation to spend a year at the European University Institute in Florence on a Jean Monnet fellowship.

After a long career in academia, he was invited, in 1991, to join the government of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki to launch and run Poland’s then-fledgling EU integration office. So began a six-year period of his life he describes as “fascinating and romantic”. Fascinating, he says, because “we had a clear goal and strong determination” and romantic because “we were starting a huge challenge from scratch.”

In 1996, having negotiated Poland’s association agreement aimed at paving the way for eventual membership, he returned to the ivory towers of academia as vice-rector of the College of Europe’s Warsaw campus.

Three years later, he was back in government as chief adviser on EU affairs to the then prime minister Jerzy Buzek (who, like him, is now an MEP).

His stubbornness in negotiating his country’s accession agreement with the EU during this period is legendary.

Saryusz-Wolski himself is happy to accept that he was no pushover, saying: “It’s for others to say how tough I was during the negotiations but I believed that Poland and other Eastern European countries deserved early accession and decent conditions of entry.

“We may not have achieved 100% of what we wanted but I think we achieved most of what we set out to.”

A senior Polish MEP, however, believes that his obstinacy was counter-productive, saying: “He was too abrasive and inflexible in the negotiations. His approach was not conducive to creating an atmosphere of compromise and meant Poland didn’t proceed as fast as it could have done in closing accession chapters.”

Having earned himself the nickname of Poland’s “Mr Europe”, Saryusz-Wolski left politics in the autumn of 2001 when the Buzek government fell.

Having dedicated eight years to EU affairs in a total of six governments, he returned to his ‘first love’ of teaching.

He evidently enjoys mixing politics and the academic life. “I find a very positive synergy between the two,” he says. “What I like most about teaching is that it gives you the chance to confront the brains of the young but what academia lacks is the ability to act.

“It can be too static. What politics lacks, though, is a sense of profound reflection. Putting the two together is a fertile combination.”

His return to politics was almost undone by his record in academia. Around the time he was considering standing for the Parliament, he was attacked in the Polish press over allegations that two institutes he had helped to found, the College of Europe in Warsaw and the Centre for European Studies at Lodz University, had benefited financially from his ministerial position.

A Polish journalist recalls: “It must be stressed that it was never suggested that he’d done anything corrupt or illegal but, rather, that government funds had not been used as wisely as they should have been.”

The newspaper stories were never substantiated and the publicity certainly didn’t appear to cause him any harm. In last year’s European elections, which were the first in which he stood for election, Saryusz-Wolski received 66,589 votes, 24% of the votes cast, in his home town.

But for the fact that his party, Civic Platform, was in opposition, Saryusz-Wolski might well be sitting in an office in the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters rather than on the spacious fifth floor

of the Parliament, overlooking Brussels’s place du Luxembourg.

His candidacy to become Poland’s first-ever commissioner was supported by the main Polish opposition parties but the post eventually went to the country’s Europe minister, Danuta Hübner.

He readily admits he “would have liked” Hübner’s job and that his choice of portfolio would have been external relations or regional policy, the two areas of EU policy he considers most important for Poland.

But, despite Parliament’s limitations and the nomadic existence of an MEP (“the worst part of the job”), he says “It’s more interesting than I thought it would be.”

The crisis in Ukraine gave him a chance to attract attention and was well-suited to his bulldozing skills. The 56-year-old was in Kiev on key occasions during the Ukraine crisis He co-wrote the main parliamentary resolutions on Ukraine. He believes it is Ukraine’s “destiny” to join the EU.

Saryusz-Wolski is married to Grazyna, a professor in English literature at Lodz University. The couple have a son, Wojciech, 26, an economics graduate who is currently doing a stage with the Commission’s regional policy department, and a 24-year-old daughter, Katherine, who is studying law at Warsaw University.

He spends most summers in Poland, walking in the Tatra mountains and sailing on the Mazury Lakes. But after a recent accident at home he has had to downgrade his passion for mountain climbing to less demanding walks.

As for the political ascent of Poland’s Mr Europe, that is not yet over.

Biography

1948: Born in Lodz, Poland

1966-71: Studies international economics at University of Lodz

1980-81: Deputy spokesman for Solidarity in the Lodz region

1988: Appointed director of Lodz’s Centre for European Studies

1989-90: Jean Monnet Fellow at European University Institute, Florence